Opinion

Last week’s first of three public planning meetings on the comprehensive plan for the Springfield Medical District drew a big crowd and a healthy discussion. The professionals from RTKL Associates Inc., which has offices in Baltimore, Chicago, Dallas, and other major cities, gave a nice presentation with interesting facts that they have accumulated so far. […]

With the growing number of exonerations in recent years, it is obvious that Illinois has seen more than its share of individuals who have been wrongfully convicted and given long prison sentences or the death penalty by our courts. When those convictions and sentences were handed down, law enforcement and prosecutors celebrated the virtues of […]

Louis Russo was not quite 20 when he was interrogated by Illinois State Police in March 2003. It was the day after his infant daughter’s funeral, and investigators had reason to believe that Russo might have caused the baby’s death. Special Agent Cynthia Robbins and Sgt. Rebecca Dewitt-Early gave Russo his Miranda warning and then […]

President George W. Bush’s handlers keep him in a happy little bubble, comfortably isolated from something kind of important for a president: reality. Bush says that he doesn’t read newspapers, instead trusting his aides to give him any “news” he needs to know. And when he goes on the road for one of his “town […]

Think you’re the only one who’s having a rough time in today’s economy, bucko? It’s time you started thinking about someone else — such as the rich. Yeah, the rich. Too few Americans consider the hardships of those at the top. Yeah, yeah, we hear you working stiffs whining all the time about how your […]

Come on, you grumps of Springfield — it’s time to quit complaining and get seeds in the ground. There’s a movement afoot to make this a better place, one yard at a time. The idea is that every seed plants hope, every plant adds life and beauty, and every planter becomes part of the civic […]

When my friend Debora heard that I was moving to Illinois, she took me aside to offer me advice about Midwesterners. “You can’t expect them to act as friendly as Southerners,” she said, “but when they are nice, you’ll know they mean it.” At the time, her counsel mystified me. I never thought of Debora […]

One of the worst aspects of the global corporate culture is that it routinely pits one group of workers against another in the corporate pursuit of dirt-cheap labor. This has come to an ugly head in recent years with the mass offshoring of U.S. call-center jobs. These workers answer questions that American consumers have about […]

I now have to travel the 30-or-so miles to Girard to take flowers to my friend Elizabeth Brown, who’s living at the Pleasant Hill Village nursing home. She was organist at our church for many years, and though she likes the care she’s getting and the facility in which she lives, she always talks about […]